VERY YOUNG ENT: You don't need to tell me. That's giant -- like, giant. How are we even having this conversation?

SEK: (resisting to the urge to say, "What conversation?") With effort.

VERY YOUNG ENT: No doubt, man, no doubt. So it's not infected, it's just --

SEK: Weird?

VERY YOUNG ENT: Very weird. Let me look something up. (leaves)

And that's where SEK's story ends, at least for the moment, because SEK is still in the room where the VERY YOUNG ENT left him. After about 30 minutes SEK got so bored sitting in the room that he took out his laptop and wrote this.

SEK isn't sure whether the VERY YOUNG ENT is coming back, or even if the VERY YOUNG ENT's offices are even open anymore.

The rest of the story is available at Facebook because sorry, that's just where people "live-blog" stuff now.

Tuesday, 10 February 2015

SEK was -- as you well know -- once a respected academic who hobnobbed with the people at the very top of his discipline. So he is accustomed to meeting people whose work he has invested days and months of his life into. But none of them were on the television and apparently that makes a big difference, as SEK learned at the Dallas Comic Con this weekend.

SEK was wandering around in a futile attempt to keep up with one of the Con's organizers, Devin Pike, when he "accidentally" ended up in the "backstage" area where the talent hangs out when they're not signing or taking photographs. And before you ask -- if you give SEK media credentials he will "accidentally" end up a lot of places he's probably not supposed to be. That is the nature of SEK and even if he didn't do it deliberately the universe would oblige. Or possibly insist.

And then he danced out of SEK's life forever. SEK takes comfort in the fact that, at least, he got two words out in the face of Captain Jack's relentless charm offensive. In SEK's defense he did fare better here than the first time he met Gay Talese. That was an unmitigated disaster.

Monday, 02 February 2015

SEK is on his way from Baton Rouge to Houston. Outside of Scott, Louisiana he witnesses a bus try to switch lanes, clipping the car in front of him and sending it spinning into the median, where it finally comes to a halt on an incline, almost sideways.

The bus just keeps on going.

SEK pulls over, exits his vehicle, and walks back toward the car and peers into the car. SIDEWAYS GUY is slumped over unconscious on his deployed airbag. Then –

MYSTERIOUS VOICE: Hello, are you OK?

SEK (confused): Are you OK?

MYSTERIOUS VOICE: Are YOU OK?

SEK (still confused): I’m fine. Who are you?

MYSTERIOUS VOICE: Who are YOU?

SEK (still, yes, confused): I’m Scott.

MYSTERIOUS VOICE: And where are you?

SEK: (you guessed it) Scott.

MYSTERIOUS VOICE: No, WHERE are you?

SEK: (baffled) Outside of Scott, Louisiana.

MYSTERIOUS VOICE: Don’t worry, help is already on the way.

At this point, SEK FINALLY realizes he’s been talking to an OnStar representative and he hears sirens. The EMS and police arrive, and SEK points to unconscious SIDEWAYS GUY and starts talking to the cops.

COP: Could you describe the vehicle?

SEK: It was a bus. It had the [company name written] on the side and…

COP: And what?

SEK: It had a cartoon character on the side of it, and it was…

COP: What was it?

SEK: This is going to sound terrible, and you know I’m trying to be helpful, but…

COP: But what?

SEK: I’m pretty sure it was a cartoon pig dressed up like a cop.

COP: A cartoon pig — dressed up like — a law enforcement officer?

SEK: I’m pretty sure.

COP: OK — you wait here.

SEK then repeats his story to a few other officers, and is informed he will be contacted on Monday to be deposed, as he is the only witness to the accident.

BUT THERE’S MORE — BELOW THE FOLD!

First, about an hour and a half a few hundred miles later, SEK sees a bus pulled over and surrounded by cop cars and he feels jubilation because he makes for one BAD ASS eye witness, and…

Second, here’s the logo of the company — does this not look like a pig in a cop’s uniform?

Tuesday, 23 December 2014

Because it’s my birthday and I have the God-given right to behave insufferably on it, I’d like to complain about this otherwise excellent list of the top 50 comic book artists that Brian Cronin at Comic Book Resources has put together. Obviously, there are problems with objectively ranking art and what-not, but despite a bit of presentism, the list is mostly solid.

My complaint is with the analysis — or more accurately, the lack thereof. For example, Cronin includes this sequence of panels from Amazing Spider-Man #230:

And says this about them: “Amazing. His character work is different now, but his page designs are the same and they’re still excellent.”

I know Cronin’s capable of more — and again, because I have the right to be insufferable today anddemand more — I’m going to provide more. Want to know why this sequence by John Romita Jr. warrants his inclusion in any top 50 list of comic book artists?

Panel 1 is open — that is, without defined borders — and that openness is used to indicate that events depicted within it don’t have a predefined outcome as of yet. This kind of non-panel paneling is often used in splash pages at the beginning of epic tight-filled battles, with hundreds of dozens of characters spilling over each other in a mad rush to do justice.

But here, despite the openness of the panel, Romita Jr. opts for intimacy — not only are Spider-Man and the Juggernaut the only two characters in the open panel, but they’ve been transported into a Beckett play. There literally is no world beyond their struggle and the words they have to say about it.

In Panel 2 — properly bordered as the outcome becomes more clear — the Juggernaut is still the dominant figure, and his defiant words occupy the bottom half of the panel.

But as Spider-Man starts to get the upper hand in Panel 3, the compositional balance shifts. Peter Parker’s thoughts start to crowd the action further down the panel, and no matter how hard the Juggernaut tries to pound him off — as indicated by the little stars dancing around Spider-Man’s head — Parker’s indomitable will is proving to be the decisive element in this fight.

In Panels 4 and 5, Spider-Man’s thoughts about responsibility are allowing him to subdue his much more powerful opponent. The weight of those thoughts is allowing the slight web-slinger to defeat a man who goes by nom de guerre “Juggernaut.”

Romita Jr. is using these first five panels to compose a stunning tribute to the power of will to triumph over brute strength — or it’s just a set-up. Panel 6 is a close-up of the Juggernaut’s gums, which had stopped flapping for a few panels there, indicating that he’s having mobility issues. Given the way the world fell away in Panel 1, the close-up in Panel 6 works like the final beat a comic holds before delivering the punchline — which in this case is that the pair had been fighting in a pond of wet cement.

All those words I wrote about how the weight of Parker’s responsibility overpowered the Juggernaut in Panels 2, 3, 4 and 5 remains true — but now it becomes clear that they were also slowly sinking in wet cement. Not that the reader knows that, because they fought in a Beckettian void of will and word, but even after the punchline’s been delivered, the tension remains. Yes, they were sinking into a sea of cement — but they were also engaged in a struggle which, for Parker, was deeply connected to his ever-present and always-punishing sense of responsibility.

And that, my friends, is why John Romita Jr. is one of the top 50 comic book artists of all time.

Wednesday, 10 December 2014

So I almost landed an interview with Kirk Cameron about why he thought his new film was the lowest rated movie on IMDB, but I heard back from his people and apparently he found something I wrote yesterday “terribly disappointing” and called it off — which I found weird given that I didn’t work yesterday.*

But in case you’re wondering what it’s like to be vetted by Kirk Cameron’s people, it goes something like this:

SEK is being interviewed by Kirk Cameron’s Handler (KCH) for a potential article.

KCH: Kirk wants to know if you have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, Christ the Savior.

SEK: I attended CCD for a few years and studied Latin in college. I translated a lot of the Church Fathers — Augustine, Aquinas, and the like.

KCH: That’s really interesting, really. So you know about sin?

SEK: I know more than anyone cares to about the danger stealing pears from your neighbor can pose for your soul.

KCH: So you were raised Catholic?

SEK: Catholic and Jewish.

KCH: You know Hebrew?

SEK: Passably.

KCH: Kirk’s a big fan of Hebrew, big fan.

SEK: It’s the only dead language to be revived.

KCH: I didn’t know that, did not know. That’s really interesting. Are you gay?

SEK: I am not.

KCH: Good, good, just need to dot those “t”s. Have you ever been gay?

SEK: I have not, but I’m not sure how that’s relevant to my ability to discuss film. Did you read the links I sent?

KCH: I did, and they were great, great. Loved them, loved. But some of the language was not quite Christ-like.

SEK: I can adapt to my audience — we’ve been talking for twenty minutes and I haven’t cussed once.

Tuesday, 02 December 2014

I spent two glorious hours on Graphic Policy Radio last night ostensibly talking about NBC's Constantine, but as the title of this post indicates, we got a little digressive. You can listen to the entire podcast below:

Check Out Pop Culture Podcasts at Blog Talk Radio with graphicpolicy on BlogTalkRadio

Friday, 28 November 2014

In the summer of 1998 or thereabouts -- dates are difficult to differentiate in the whorl of undergradute years -- I found an orange kitten huddled underneath my back porch.

It was winter and the kitten seemed starving, so I did what I could to introduce it into my household, which at the time consisted of one very angry and possessive woman who was having none of this interloper, so when my neighbors mentioned having lost their kitten the next day, it was better for everyone involved that he return home.

Two years and two kittens later -- the latter having been semi-almost-successfully integrated into the household -- my wife and I were returning from an ill-timed trip to the grocery store. The Louisiana rain did as Louisiana rain does, soaking everything beyond the telling of it and as my wife and I shuffled our groceries out of the car and into the house, a wet orange ball followed us in.

Without even bothering to introduce himself, the cat who would be Finnegan walked over to a food bowl and began eating.

His silence -- as we would soon learn -- was unusual. He had, it seemed, been hungry for some time, so we took him in for the night. I checked with the neighbor the next day to see if she had misplaced her orange cat again, only to discover that my neighbor had moved.

Finnegan had not been welcome there anymore for reasons anyone who ever knew him would be incapable of understanding.

Granted, he did enjoy chewing through wires -- and the more expensive the equipment they were attached the better. But the attention being paid to the noises in the headphones was better spent on him and he needed you to know that.

But he wasn't sure you did -- so he asked you questions. Finnegan always asked everybody questions, his voice rising into an interrogative with every subsequent mew. Because he was never satisfied with any answer and would engage you in an endless interrogation into matters only he understood fully.

I mention this because the house is so quiet and unquestioned since his passing. I walk around wondering why the world's allowed to just exist and am reminded of the absence of its inquisitor.

Most of the time I think he was asking whether this or that inedible substance was edible. We sometimes referred to him -- with love -- as "the Finnegoat" because he would eat anything and did so with evident relish. It was his waning appetite that clued us in to the fact that something was wrong, and that something, as is often the case with elderly cats, fell to his kidneys.

We managed his condition with medication for almost five months -- five months in which I should have spent more time with him -- but in the end he let us know his time had come with his silence.

The bright boy who once questioned the world quieted his investigative assault and we knew what we had to do.

Not that that made it any easier because nothing makes losing someone who had been a part of your daily life for fifteen years any easier.

Some mornings I swear I hear him demanding of the staircase knowledge of its steepness or inquiring of a cabinet a reckoning of its contents.

And so as I write this a few months after his passing, I can only ask myself -- exactly as he would have asked me -- what took you so long and why are your eyes leaking and I saw a thing and is it time to eat?

Monday, 24 November 2014

Thanksgiving is a holiday that allows filmmakers to get back to the medium’s theatrical roots. No elaborate sets are required — just a table and some people who know each other so well they decided to come together once a year rather than interact regularly. It is a chance for film to scale back its visual ambitions and look like a play without stumbling into the stodgy stage direction of an old episode of Masterpiece Theatre. Only unlike those film adaptations of dramatic works, there is a natural quality to the limitations placed upon a film that happens on Thanksgiving. Everyone looks like they’re in the same place not because the theater couldn’t afford better sets, but because everyone is trapped in the same confined spaces by strained familial bonds. Because if ever there were a time and a place for families to fall apart, it’s Thanksgiving.

Families fall apart all the time — I consider “families falling apart” to be a genre, and Noah Baumbach the current king of it — but never as spectacularly as they do during Thanksgiving. Perhaps as alluded to above, it is because of the artificially pressurized atmosphere the holiday creates. People who don’t particularly like each other are yet again forced to make extended displays of false joviality in order to please the one family member who actually cares about everyone. Sometimes that character is a doting mother, sometimes a dying father, or in the case of the “Pangs” episode of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, an empty-nested Chosen One whose surrogate family is on the brink of collapse...

Wednesday, 05 November 2014

I believe if you start reading here you’ll be able to see exactly what I’ve been dealing with tonight…but that’s not why I’m writing this.

I’m writing this because some people — who can not be proven to be the people involved in that conversation — are threatening to tell my employers that I’ve been accused of sexual harassment and am therefore an enemy to “true feminists” and “feminism” everywhere. They’re also claiming that I failed to act appropriately in another awful incident and this, I admit, is why I’m angry enough to write this post.

All of which tells me everything I need to know about them who would doxx me — I say let ‘em, as I know y’all remember things I’ve done that are far worse or more impolitic. Right?

Thursday, 30 October 2014

The most interesting visual element in this shot is the perspective implied by the camera placement. By partially obscuring the view of Reiko Asakawa, Nakata suggests that this might be a point-of-view shot, thereby planting in the minds of the audience the idea that perhaps she’s being watched—and that the audience might be sharing the perspective of whoever (or whatever) is doing the watching. The fact that the camera is perfectly still here adds to the unease, because that lack of movement alone suggests the watcher may (or may not) be in plain sight, yet is undetected and wishes to remain so. In classic horror fashion, Nakata wants his audience to inhabit the mind and perspective of a stalker.

Tuesday, 23 September 2014

So, as noted yesterday, I went on Graphic Policy Radio and discussed the series of premier of Gotham, which you can listen to here:

The more serious discussion concerned how a show whose conclusion is foregone can actually survive -- after all, even though Gotham is going to focus, somewhat Wire-like, on the internal conflicts of the police and various criminal organizations, in the end we all know that the situation's going to deteriorate to the point at which the only answer is a wealthy orphan patrolling the night in a fetish bat outfit.

Still, that leaves room for a good 10 or so seasons of watching the city fall apart, and that could certainly be gratifying, but only if the series creators understand what they have and how to use it. Which brings me to the second David Simon reference in this post, because I think the show's ceiling could be something like Homicide: Life on the Street.

Consider how that show began, with Tim Bayliss catching the Adena Watson case, and how it haunted him through all six-ish seasons. In a similar fashion, you know the deaths of Thomas and Martha Wayne are going to haunt Gordon, and you know that he -- like Bayliss -- is going to form an unhealthy attachment to both the case and those left in its wake.

Do I think Gotham is going to reach these heights? In all likelihood not.

But do I think that it has a higher ceiling than most quasi-procedural cop dramas currently on television? I most certainly do.

On a side note, we also established the most appropriate possible context for one of those Internet traditions I started awhile back:

Monday, 22 September 2014

I’ll be on Graphic Policy Radio again tonight discussing Fox’s new Batman-related show Gotham. The show begins at 10 p.m. EST and you’re more than welcome to call in, tweet at me, or drop me a line on Facebook if you have something you’d like to add to the program — or if you’d just like heckle or berate me. The choice is yours!

Tuesday, 16 September 2014

If you're interested in what I have to say about Guardians of the Galaxy, I was a guest on Graphic Policy Radio radio talking about it last night.

I made a number of claims about the film, foremost among them its indebtedness to mid-period Marx Brothers films.

I also said quite about something I kept calling "old-school sci-fi wonder" -- though I have no idea why I became so wedded to that phrase -- and Parks and Rec, because anytime I have the opportunity to discuss Parks and Rec, I will.

UPDATE: I forgot many of the interesting tangents we went on, e.g. What would a science fiction film that wasn't anthropocentric actually look like, and would it ever get made? (For example, can you imagine a film version of an Iain M. Banks novel?)

AND ALSO: All of the "Bert Macklin, FBI" stuff on Parks and Rec -- his deep commitment to his flights of fancy -- always reminded me of what Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes would've grown up to be like, so Guardians of the Galaxy struck me like a "Spaceman Spiff" serial.

Check Out Pop Culture Podcasts at Blog Talk Radio with graphicpolicy on BlogTalkRadio

Friday, 08 August 2014

SEK went to the supermarket to pick up tuna fish for his elderly cat who now only eats food that also contains tuna. As tuna is on sale, he purchases twenty cans of it and is on the checkout line in front of POLITE DRUNK MAN.

POLITE DRUNK MAN: You don’t eat all them cans, now?

SEK: Wasn’t planning on it.

POLITE DRUNK MAN: TV say they full of Menicillin.

SEK: Mercury?

POLITE DRUNK MAN: Menicillin, bad for the children, real bad.

SEK: I promise not to share it with any kids.

POLITE DRUNK MAN: Menicillin’s terrible, make ‘em have miscarriages.

SEK: The kids?

POLITE DRUNK MAN: Ain’t even get a chance to be kids, they born miscarried, or with arms.

A real litmus test for me is how people treat someone who is waiting on them. That’s a deal-breaker for me. If I were on the verge of getting into a serious relationship and I saw that person be mean to a waiter — I’m out. That’s a core problem. You’re being mean to someone who’s helping you. What is that? Everyone knows who the assholes are, and I avoid them.

Because it’s a funny story, but in the ’90s I actually waited on Steven Soderbergh quite a bit, and if that’s his litmus test, he didn’t pass it. Not even remotely.

Because as memory serves, when Soderbergh was a regular at the used bookstore/coffee shop I worked at, his treatment of me then would’ve been a deal-breaker for him now.

One particularly memorable conversation involved his then-obsession with Ambrose Bierce. I’d placed the special orders for the books myself, so I knew they’d just come in the week before Mr. Ambrose Bierce Expert saw me reading Mason & Dixon behind the counter. He proceeded to excitedly tell me, at length and with some volume, that I was wasting my time reading Thomas Pynchon, because Ambrose Bierce was where it’s really at.

He went on and on and on, enthralled by his own love of Bierce — which, after I became an Americanist and read him, I believe is totally justifiable. But the point is, Soderbergh wouldn’t just have failed his own criterion for the measure of humanity, he would have done so spectacularly.

Which, as a friend on Facebook noted, might be the point. He might have chosen his worst character trait as the defining characteristic of humanity because it’s something he had to overcome, and given the depth of charity to the underprivileged and unvoiced evident in his work, I’m tempted to believe that.

Because as much as I despised him as a patron when I had to deal with him, I can’t help but admire — however begrudgingly — what he’s done with himself in the years since, especially Che.

I know I’m defending the film against an idiot of an ideologue at that link, but even if I had to defend it against Roger Ebert himself, I’d do so with the same vehemence…

…despite how I feel about the man personally. He’s just that talented, damn it. There’s a real humanity to his late-period work, especially in the films that everyone hated because they dealt with unsavory subjects like prostitutes or viral pandemics or Che.

So on behalf of all the baristas and book-store employees he berated before he came to understand this truth as being self-evident, I’m just going to go ahead and forgive him.

Thursday, 19 June 2014

What had, minutes earlier, been an audition for the role of “child” in a production of “family” has transformed into one for the role of “cog” in “drug enterprise.” The confusion created by placing these scenes back-to-back will resonate throughout the season, as Taystee must decide whether Vee is a caring mother figure or an exacting boss. Initially, at least, she seems to understand the difference—but as the episode progresses, the amount of emotional energy she invests in acquiring a job becomes increasingly excessive, making the stitching of these two scenes together seem increasingly meaningful.

Thursday, 22 May 2014

The camera communicates a psychological state, but the logic C.K. follows here isn’t predicated on the uncertainty of dreams so much as the tedium of depression.

Everything is the same visually, in terms of the shot selection, but the situation is growing worse. Louie is increasingly a show about the mundane yet fraught experience of depression, and this mood is reflected in C.K.’s direction.

SEK: The novel reads very much like the world it describes—utterly familiar, yet slightly off at all points. Was that your intent? (For example, on 59, you describe “Something like a body or a person,” which makes perfect sense, yet is incredibly disturbing. What is like a body or a person that’s not a body or a person?)

JV: I hike a lot in North Florida, and from a distance, things look like other things. A bat can metamorph into a bird when seen closer. A creature on a log becomes just a stubby branch. A seeming tree trunk is actually a bear. You think you are going north, but suddenly, through some daydream of lapse of attention, you get turned around.

These are, in a sense, reminders to us that the real world is stranger than we usually think. Imagine being able to spy on the processes going on around you while even walking down the sidewalk on your street—the plants employing photosynthesis and speaking to each other in chemical emissions, the ants with their pheromone trails, the fungi with their spores. Why, there’s still crowded and noisy cosmopolitan situation all around you, but you can’t experience any of it because your senses are these stunted, incomplete systems.

You’ve got eyes that can’t see the whole spectrum. A cat would laugh at your stupid sense of smell. Your sense of taste is pathetic compared to many creatures. Your sense of touch is put to shame by your average gecko. So the world is in a sense laughing at you anyway, or on some level ignoring you completely, and your sole contribution is the ability to tread too heavily on a dandelion and break its stem. So if we’re honest the world should feel slightly off at times. The world should at times reveal some glint or glimmer of greater processes ongoing. Something like a body or a person. Something like a shadow or a creature. Something like a sudden clue…

SEK: On page 111, you note that the pile of journals describing Area X will soon become Area X itself. This strikes me as a literal version of “contact narratives,” in which what an explorer writes about an area he discovers becomes how future generations understand it. (Describing cities of gold in the “New World” leading explorers to “discover” such cities, even though they only ever existed in print.) Are these books [in "the Southern Reach" trilogy] an exercise in, call it, “creative geography”? Re-shaping the world by describing it?

JV: I must admit my minor in college was Latin American history, and I’m sure there’s a sedimentary layer in the back of my brain that, in soaking all of that conflicted and difficult chronology, has peeked out through some of the observations in Annihilation. I guess I was also thinking of the journals from the prior expeditions as almost being like the bones of the explorers, in word form. This is where they washed up, their instruments useless, all logic revealed as merely construct to push them through the day.

And, yes, there is perhaps a parallel: explorers and exploiters who are culturally so different and from such a different landscape that the very land seems to reject them, even when they seem to have conquered it. I’m not particularly fond of missionaries or of conquerors or empires, all of which strike me as examples of dreaming poorly but, alas, doing so across a vast continuum of human endeavor, to the brutal detriment of all who push back with perhaps a more sustainable and humane vision of the world…

Wednesday, 23 April 2014

You can read my full recap here, but just in case you want to know where I come down on the episode’s most controversial issue:

Speaking of still being alive, Jaime Lannister is, and he’s a man, and he has needs. In a reversal of the Jaime-is-becoming-a-better-human-being plot, here we have a sex-starved Jaime raping his sister over the body of their dead child — in other words, we have a return to the incestuous relations that make King’s Landing the city we love to hate.

As for whether it’s a rape, director Alex Graves told Alan Sepinwall that “it becomes consensual by the end, because anything for them ultimately results in a turn-on, especially a power struggle.” Which means, yes, it’s rape.

So, there’s that out of the way…

My podcast with Steven Attewell on the new episode of Game of Thrones is also available:

Given that I also write for The Onion, I feel I should point out that this article is not from The Onion. But if we were better people — did less of that awful sinning against the Lord and stuff — we could live in a world where it would be.

Thursday, 20 February 2014

Typically, romances rely on a small stable of predictable-but-effective techniques that convince the audience it’s witnessing the first, chemical blush of fresh love.

The most basic of these techniques is the two-shot, in which the director places both prospective lovers in the same frame. A series of two-shots, stacked one after the other, has a cumulative effect on the audience, which begins to expect to see these two characters together in every shot. After a while, shots that only contain one of the lovers will strike the audience as oddly empty, even if the sole lover in it is centrally framed in a way that would make it impossible for the other to be in the shot. By manipulating audience expectations in this way, the missing lover becomes an absent-presence in the film, something the audience wants to see. If the director only includes one lover in shots for an extended period of time, the audience will begin to feel that something is “wrong,” because the director is confounding the expectation he or she created. When the director relents and fulfills that expectation with a two-shot of the lovers reunited, the frame suddenly seems somehow more “correct” to the audience.